Ratcliffe releases damning Durham annex. Here’s what it reveals about Obama-Clinton Russia collusion hoax.

As promised, CIA Director John Ratcliffe has declassified the appendix from the 2023 Durham report and provided the documents to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). The contents are damning.

The Department of Justice authorized federal prosecutor John Durham in 2019 to explore the origins of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s investigation into whether President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russia to win the presidential election — which the intelligence community knew full well did not occur.

The result was a 306-page unclassified report that exposed the bureau’s investigation as an Obama administration hatchet job launched on the basis of “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” willfully blind to contradictory information, and conducted without basic due diligence.

In addition to exposing misconduct — how an FBI attorney apparently altered an email in support of a FISA renewal request targeting a Trump campaign adviser — and highlighting how the bureau took a far different approach when tackling failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s alleged pay-to-play scheme, Durham detailed the FBI’s outsized reliance on a foreign-sourced political opposition research report paid for in part by the Clinton campaign, the contents of which the bureau knew to be unreliable.

There was more to Durham’s report than what was originally made publicly available: namely a 29-page classified appendix that provided insights into the genesis of the Russia collusion hoax.

That appendix, released on Thursday by Grassley, provides additional insights into the FBI’s willful failure under former Director James Comey to investigate intelligence indicating that the Clinton campaign manufactured the Russia collusion hoax out of whole cloth.

The so-called Durham annex also provides strong indications that when confronted with evidence of the Clinton campaign plan, the FBI ultimately decided not only to play along but to weaponize the false narrative against Trump.

According to the Durham annex, the Obama administration received intelligence from a source via two separate memos — one in January 2016 and the other in March 2016 — describing confidential conversations between then-Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and two individuals at George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Leonard Benardo and Jeffrey Goldstein.

‘The FBI will put more oil into the fire.’

Both memos referred to former President Barack Obama’s intention and alleged efforts to torpedo the FBI’s probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server and mishandling of highly classified information while secretary of state.

RELATED: Ex-CIA counterintelligence chief Susan Miller’s Russia hoax denials reek of desperation

  Photo by Pete Souza/The White House via Getty Images

The March memo revealed, however, that Democrats weren’t just circling the wagons but going on offense, noting that the Democratic Party’s “opposition is focused on discrediting Trump through debates and propaganda activities” and that “the Clinton staff, with support from special services, is preparing scandalous revelations of business relations between Trump and the ‘Russian Mafia.'”

The annex indicated that FBI analysts suspected that “special services” was a reference “to the FBI and the CIA or more broadly to the intelligence and law enforcement communities” and/or to “Trump dossier author Christopher Steele.”

The Durham annex noted further that in the summer of 2016, the FBI received additional information regarding the alleged Clinton campaign plan to smear Trump, falsely link him to Russia, then have the deep state carry the ball down the field.

Among the information received was an email purportedly written by Leonard Benardo on July 27, 2016, which stated in part:

[Hillary Rodham Clinton] approved [Campaign Advisor Julie’s] idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections. That should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level. The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue. Say something like a critical infrastructure threat for the election to feel menace since bout POTUS and VPOTUS have acknowledged the fact IC would speed up searching for evidence that is regrettable still unavailable.

In a separate email attributed to Benardo, the author suggested that with regard to the “long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump,” “the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”

‘History will show that the Obama and Biden administration’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies were weaponized against President Trump.’

The officers and analysts whom Durham interviewed informed the special counsel that their best assessment was that this and other emails were likely authentic.

In 2017, the CIA “prepared a written assessment of the authenticity and veracity of the above-referenced intelligence. The CIA stated that it did not assess that the above [redacted] memoranda, or [redacted] hacked U.S. communications, to be the product of Russian fabrications,” according to the annex.

RELATED: Declassified report: Obama’s FBI failed to search key evidence in Clinton email probe

  Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Despite the apparent authenticity of these letters and credibility of the corresponding intelligence, the Durham report indicated that there was no evidence that the FBI disclosed the contents of the Clinton plan intelligence to the attorneys working on the FISA matters related to Crossfire Hurricane, to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or to numerous individuals working on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Although parties directly relevant to the investigation were kept in the dark, the Durham annex indicated that then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama, VP Joe Biden, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Comey, and other top Obama officials on the matter.

“Based on the Durham annex, the Obama FBI failed to adequately review and investigate intelligence reports showing the Clinton campaign may have been ginning up the fake Trump-Russia narrative for Clinton’s political gain, which was ultimately done through the Steele dossier and other means,” stated Grassley.

“These intelligence reports and related records, whether true or false, were buried for years. History will show that the Obama and Biden administration’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies were weaponized against President Trump,” continued Grassley. “This political weaponization has caused critical damage to our institutions and is one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history. The new Trump administration has a tremendous responsibility to the American people to fix the damage done and do so with maximum speed and transparency.”

This story may be updated with additional insights from the Durham annex.

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